Budget time: Jimmy Patronis, FWC outline next fiscal year’s needs

Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis is asking lawmakers to consider funding a nearly $29 million upgrade to the state’s accounting and cash management system.

The project was one of a few presented to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Environment, and General Government on Wednesday. 

At the lectern: Patronis for the Department of Financial Services and Jennifer Fitzwater for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). 

“It is a state of Florida project,” Patronis first told senators. “Every single state agency has to be able to interface and deal with this next generation of software that’s critical to the entire state.”

He likened the upgrade to “going from DOS to Windows.”

As part of DFS’ $308.1 million legislative budget request (LBR), Patronis also is seeking $1.5 million to fund improvements to the information technology aspect of the agency. Security and firewall upgrades are included. 

Patronis also highlighted a need to fund fraud-fighting personnel. He is asking lawmakers to find money for an unclaimed property fraud investigator, along with 10 part-time staffers who would investigate public-assistance fraud cases.

As well, Patronis wants three new full-time positions in the Insurance Fraud Unit, which operates under the law enforcement aspect of the agency. And he’s asking lawmakers for $1.1 million to fund upgrades to bomb response units.

Fitzwater, FWC’s Chief of Staff, followed Patronis’ presentation. She outlined a request from her agency that seeks $85.7 million more than the 2018-19 baseline budget.

Two new full-time positions requested by FWC would staff a “harmful algal bloom task force,” Fitzwater said.

Those two positions, combined with other improvements to FWC’s Center for Red Tide Research, total a roughly $4.2 million ask.

“A big chunk of that is going to be a grant program that would be administered, through the institute, for innovative technologies that try to address and remediate red tide,” Fitzwater said.

Another $2.5 million request would, if funded, help FWC complete a redfish hatchery to reintroduce the species in areas where red tide killed them off. The hatchery is located at Hillsborough County’s Apollo Beach.

More than $5 million of the additional money FWC requested, meanwhile, would go toward facility improvement. That includes a $1.16 million upgrade to the agency’s Bryant Building in Tallahassee.